Tag: downtown business association of charlottesville

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Crossed off: Petition to close Fourth Street withdrawn

A petition to close Fourth Street to vehicle traffic prompted immediate protest from downtown business owners, who started a counter-petition to keep the mall’s crossings open. (Staff Photo)

The woman collecting signatures to close the Fourth Street Downtown Mall crossing has withdrawn her petition and deleted her Twitter account. “There was so much outcry, so much hatred,” says petitioner Aileen Bartels.

Safety was her primary concern, and she wanted people to be able to visit the mall without worrying about cars. Although her petition never made it to City Council, the issue was a hot topic among those making public comments at the August 19 meeting, many of them mall business owners, all of them opposed to closing Fourth Street.

Hedge owner Karen Walker says her business doubled when she moved from the mall to the cross street, and she hired two more employees.

Derriere de Soie owner Megan Giltner moved her business to Fourth Street for the access, and says her customers can often park across the street from her store. “My concern [is] if they close it, people will keep driving around the mall.”

The Downtown Mall opened as a pedestrian-only space in 1976. There was resistance to the first mall crossing, which came in 1995. Developer Lee Danielson built the then-Regal Cinema only on the condition the city would open Second Street to cross traffic. Danielson, who also built the ice rink, is credited with revitalizing the mall, which was often dark and deserted after 5pm.

In 2005, mall merchants asked City Council to consider a second permanent crossing on the east end of the mall because construction of the Pavilion and transit center had closed Sixth and Seventh streets to traffic.

“We lobbied for three years to get Fourth Street open,” says Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville chair Joan Fenton, citing the need for deliveries, trash pick up, and disabled parking and drop off.

The DBA started their own petition to keep Fourth Street open, which had 352 signatures online as of August 23 (Fenton says there are hundreds more on paper petitions). She says every successful pedestrian mall has cross streets, which makes them more visible and vibrant. “We’ve learned they’re essential.”

Fourth Street will always be a tragic memorial of August 12, 2017, in Charlottesville. That’s what City Councilor Wes Bellamy noted at the August 19 meeting. “For many people, the big issue is Heather Heyer was killed on that street,” he said. “It’s a commemorative space honoring someone who lost her life and [the] dozens [who] were injured.”

But business owners say that doesn’t mean the street needs to be closed to traffic. Blair Williamson told council, “Closing this street would be the nuclear option, like Trump’s wall.” And Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, has said she didn’t think the street should be closed.

As far as general safety is concerned, in the past five years, there have been a total of 10 crashes on both Fourth and Second streets, says Charlottesville police spokesman Tyler Hawn. Six of those were non-reportable, which means no one was injured and the damage was less than $1,500. None occurred on the mall itself, and none involved pedestrians, except for that glaring August 12 exception, when the street was supposed to be closed.

Local Kevin Cox calls the cross streets the safest pedestrian crossings in Charlottesville. His concern is the perplexed tourists who drive onto the mall itself. “It happens all the time,” he told City Council. Cox would like to see bollards at the crossings to deter wrong turns. “I think this is a terrible oversight,” he said.

Bartels had gathered 365 signatures on her petition, which disappeared when she tried to make it inactive. She says she got the message from many: “I want to drive my car where I want.”

Says Bartels, “I don’t want to engage with this community.”

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Coming soon: Hundreds of new workers and only 74 parking spaces

While some business welcome the new office building under construction, others have raised concerns about parking, the less-historic design, and the costs of a two-year construction plan. Submitted rendering

The Center of Developing Entrepreneurs, now under construction on the west end of the Downtown Mall, will provide office space for more than 600 workers. But it will include only 74 parking spaces.

That drew the ire of a couple members of the Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville, who grilled builders about a potential parking shortage at their January 31 meeting in Old Metropolitan Hall.

At the meeting, representatives from CSH Development and the Wolf Ackerman architecture firm unveiled detailed plans for CODE, the latest project from hedge fund CEO Jaffray Woodriff, which will take the place of the now-demolished Main Street Arena and Escafé, and rent space to a variety of start-ups and other businesses.

“The goal of the building is to provide a healthy work environment for individuals, fledgling businesses, and established companies,” CSH president Andrew Boninti told the crowded room. “It’s designed for the collision of people, which allows for networking.”

For the most part, the crowd was receptive, sipping rosé and eagerly asking questions about new business opportunities. But midway through the meeting, Jacie Dunkle and another business owner pressed the builders on how they plan to accommodate the parking needs of hundreds of new tenants.

“Many businesses coming to this space are already downtown and already have parking,” Boninti replied. “The parking we have now is being underused.”

Later, Dunkle, owner of Tin Whistle Irish Pub and The Salad Maker, elaborated on her concerns over the phone. “There will be 670 new people looking to park,” she says, “but they’re only adding 74 spaces underground and offering some spots in the Staples parking lot.”

“I don’t blame Woodriff,” she adds. “I blame the city. It never required him to have more spaces, even though people are struggling to find parking in the city as it is.”

Boninti says parking is a concern for anything downtown. “We have secured two offsite areas four to five minutes away, which should add 50 to 75 spaces,” he says, though he declined to specify the locations.

And while the 167,000-square foot space will hold a maximum of 700 people, Boninti predicts no more than 400 will occupy it at once.

The building will have bicycle racks and showers, which could encourage employees to run or bike to work. Other Silicon Valley-inspired elements include rooftop courtyards, open staircases, and a publicly accessible ground floor with retail and food for employees working long hours.

All told, CODE could usher in a new era for downtown businesses.

“There’s been a sea shift in the historic Downtown Mall,” said Roy van Doorn, treasurer of DBAC, at the January meeting. “We’re ending the historic side of the mall and going toward the experiential side, with music, restaurants, shopping, and working.”

Like Woodriff’s record-breaking $120 million donation to the University of Virginia to build a school for data science, that statement has polarized local residents. In addition to parking concerns, Dunkle resents the shift towards “high-tech” architecture. “The ‘historic’ Downtown Mall is losing its value as being a historic venue,” she says.

Others are cautiously optimistic. “It’s always welcome to have more spaces for people who will bring business,” says José Giron, owner of Consignment House Unlimited. But he’s worried he’ll lose customers who frequented Escafé and the ice skating rink, as well as some foot traffic during the years-long building phase.

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Mall rats: Does the Downtown Mall have a rodent problem?

Yes, Virginia, there are rats on the Downtown Mall.

Many Charlottesvillians spent the last few weeks enjoying a festive holiday season on the Downtown Mall. But have we been strolling, shopping, and dining in the company of species Rattus?

No question the mall has rats—the place is packed with restaurants, which means food waste, which means rat heaven. And just so you know, the term for a group of rats is a “mischief.”

Are mall rodents on the rise?

“We receive on average less than one report a year to the city manager’s office regarding rats,” says city spokesperson Brian Wheeler. A very unscientific survey of mall vendors, restaurants, and others garnered responses ranging from “no” to “not really” to “not anymore” to “OMG yes” and “cat-sized.” Commonly mentioned problem areas include restaurant patios, tree grates, and garbage pick-up sites along Water and Market streets.

Kim Malone, a manager at Chaps, was emphatic: “I see rats outside in the morning when I come in. They’re all along the alley behind the store, next to the Paramount. And they’re in the outdoor cafés—it’s worse in the summertime.”

According to Malone, last year the mall merchants complained, and the city’s parks and recreation department, which handles animal control, responded. “They poured something down into the tree grates. The smell was horrible—people wouldn’t eat out there.” She shares an exterminator with Sal’s Caffe Italia next door.

A mall shop manager, who asked not to be identified, saw signs of rats in her store about a year ago. “We sell some food products, and they had chewed into the bags—and into one of our blankets to make a little nest,” she says. “We have a basement, and we’re in between two restaurants. And people just pile trash in the alley behind the stores.” She bought plastic bins to store her food products, and hired an exterminator to plug every possible hole.

Realistically, no city is vermin-free. Wheeler says a third-party contractor manages bait traps at “numerous locations on and around the Downtown Mall.”

But can those bait traps make a difference, given great hiding places, humans who litter and drop food, and garbage buffets? And then there’s the biggest rodent bonanza of all—the Landmark Hotel, aka the Dewberry. Most people view the derelict eyesore as a veritable Rats-Carlton.

David McNair, a journalist and publicist, says late at night a few months ago he was walking along Water Street behind the Landmark, “and I saw rats pouring out of the hotel, swarming the garbage cans there…it looked like the bins were covered with flies.”

Heather, who works at a mall restaurant and didn’t want to give her last name, says she was headed home one night past that same spot. She saw what she first thought, in the dark, was “a herd of rabbits, because they were leaping around. Then one of them brushed against my leg—it was a rat, a large one, with a roll in its mouth. The rats were so busy feasting they were literally bouncing up and down.”

Joan Fenton, chairman of the Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville and owner of Quilts Unlimited, minces no words. “The Landmark Hotel is a problem, and the city should address that. They have a responsibility to finish that deal.” But she says all restaurants face this problem and downtown business owners have been responsible in addressing it.

Brandon Butler has perhaps the worst story. He and his family were on the mall one recent Saturday morning for a Christmas parade. Afterwards, his 8-year-old daughter and her fellow Girl Scouts were hanging around near the Jefferson, when they started giggling and crowding around a large gray plastic garbage bin. Then “my wife screams, and I hear this high-pitched squealing coming out of the bin. I walked over and looked in, and there were two or three huge rats, live ones.”

“The size of cats,” his wife contributes.

Seth Wispelwey, who lives about two blocks from the mall’s Market Street side, has put traps inside his closed outdoor shed and checks them daily. He’s now up to 20 rats. He recalls walking to Live Arts one night last January. “There were two massive rats right there on the sidewalk, rather boldly walking along.” He told his spouse and friends—but he didn’t contact the city. Neither did any of the other rat-sighters we talked to.

Store owners and managers know they can call the city with rat complaints, but mall workers and residents who have seen rats seem clueless. Wheeler says Charlottesville Parks & Rec got fewer mall rat complaints in 2018 than in 2017. And without complaints, there’s no reason to step up efforts to “eraticate.”

“In total, in our MyCville database for 2018, there are six reports related to rats this year,” Wheeler says. MyCville, an online and smartphone application to request services and report issues, was just launched this year. No one interviewed for this story knew about it.

Proposed New Year’s Resolution: Get the city’s rat stats in line with actual rat sightings. In the meantime, when it comes to rats on the mall—or anywhere else—if you see something, say something.

 

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Parliamentary push-back: Benford reinstated, Fenton nearly ousted

Ousted chair George Benford watches the drama play out that results in his new job as co-chair on the DBAC with the woman who wanted him gone. Staff photo

 

Chaps owner Tony LaBua spoke for those not in the thick of last week’s Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville coup: “I’m confused. Is George not president?”

George Benford wasn’t chair at that point early in an August 17 DBAC board meeting, but within 45 minutes, he was elected co-chair, and Joan Fenton, who had prompted his August 8 resignation when she told him his election in March may not have been legal, survived a vote to remove her from the board because her opponents couldn’t muster a two-thirds majority.

The feud between the city and Charlottesville Parking Center owner Mark Brown over the Water Street Garage seeped into the DBAC, with factions forming and accusations from Fenton that Benford and other DBAC board members were in Brown’s pocket.

After last week’s public airing of DBAC grievances, Fenton took charge of Wednesday’s board meeting and explained her discovery that a decision to amend the bylaws and move the membership year to begin January 1 had never been made official, and therefore Benford’s election after former chair and former CPC general manager Bob Stroh resigned was invalid.

“I didn’t do this easily,” said Fenton. She said she’d consulted Tuel Jewelers’ Mary Loose DeViney, who in fact is a professional registered parliamentarian. DeViney agreed the elections held at the March meeting were not in accordance with the bylaws. Fenton waited to break the news until after an August 5 meeting of the bylaws committee, she said, because “I didn’t want it to look like I was doing anything improper.”

An angry board challenged Fenton when she passed out the bylaws and an e-mail with DeViney’s opinion. “Why are we just receiving this?” asked Will Van der Linde, manager of the Main Street Arena, which is owned by Brown.

Attorney David Pettit, who represents Violet Crown Cinema, which has lobbied the DBAC to tell the city it wants the Water Street Garage to be a public utility, said he came to the August 17 because Fenton asked him to weigh in on the bylaws situation, not on behalf of Violet Crown, which is also a DBAC member.

The calendar year could be changed in the bylaws by a two-thirds vote of the board, he said, but he found no evidence that occurred in the minutes. And if the board doesn’t follow its bylaws, the result is “chaos,” he said.

Fenton wanted to have an election in September at the annual members meeting, 90 days after the June 30 end of the membership year under the old bylaws. It didn’t work out like that.

Van der Linde proposed a motion to change the membership year to January 1 and make it retroactively effective January 1, 2016.

“I will question the validity of that motion because we do not know who our board was,” said Fenton.

That brought up another issue. Some of the board’s 17 members had been elected, like Benford, under the unofficial new bylaws. In a vote of only those who had been on the board before the contested election,  a 9-1 decision was made to change the membership year in the bylaws, with Fenton the sole “no” vote.

Van der Linde made another motion: “I move to fill the vacancy of [co-chair] Bob Stroh with George Benford.” That passed 8-2, with Fenton and Spring Street owner Cynthia Schroeder, who had been in the ax-Benford faction and who has plans to start a new business association, voting no.

Van der Linde had yet another motion, the most dramatic yet. “I make a motion to remove Joan Fenton from the board,” he said. That 6-2 vote, with two abstaining and two absent, failed to get the two-thirds necessary to oust Fenton.

“I think I really upset a lot of people by publicly stating my issues and by refusing to have an emergency meeting,” said Fenton, who remains co-chair, after the meeting. “I think there was a lot of anger at me and I hope we can move past that and work together.”

In a final motion, Van der Linde moved to reinstate the nine people who had been elected to the board earlier in the year.

George Benford and Joan Fenton kiss and makeup after last week's nastiness. Staff photo
George Benford and Joan Fenton kiss and makeup after last week’s ugly business. Staff photo

Several members seemed shaken by the events of the past week. David Posner, an investor with Davenport & Company and a board member whose election was questioned, said everyone had been “very happy” with how things were going at the DBAC, and that he found it alarming “all of a sudden to see this coup go down.”

“What we’re trying to do is bring this ship back to port,” said Amy Wicks-Horn, whose membership and allegiances Fenton had questioned. Although COO for the Piedmont Family YMCA, Wicks-Horn says she’s not a DBAC member in her work capacity. Fenton had pointed out that neither Wicks-Horn nor Benford owned businesses on the Downtown Mall.

“In the past week, our reputation has suffered,” when it was “only one or two individuals” leading the charge to oust Benford, said Wicks-Horn.

“It’s been very disturbing,” said Roy Van Doorn, a partner at City Select. “It’s been very personal. When motives get questioned in a public way, it’s really out of place. I ask the leaders of DBAC to temper their comments. It’s been very disturbing to the board. It’s been very disturbing to the members. [The DBAC] has to be focused on its members and its issues.”

And with that, Van der Linde moved on to talk about DBAC plans to put lighting in trees for the mall’s 40th anniversary.

Afterward, Fenton said, “Sometimes the best thing is to have an open and honest discussion. When you clear the air, you can move past that and work together.”

The issues that had been “festering” were not discussed at the meeting, she said, but people did get to express their displeasure.

She added, “I do sincerely think [Benford] and I can work together.”

 

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DBAC meltdown: Downtown business org in disarray; chair resigns

Joan Fenton ousted George Benford as chair of the Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville. Photo Eze Amos

Simmering undercurrents from the parking war between the city and Charlottesville Parking Center over the Water Street Garage have splintered the Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville, whose chairman abruptly resigned August 8 after being told he was illegally elected. The move leaves some members confused about who’s in charge and one who is working to start a new downtown business alliance.

George Benford was elected DBAC chairman in March after former chair Bob Stroh retired from both the business association and CPC, where, as general manager, he’d helped found the DBAC.

Benford says he was in New York on business August 8 when he got an e-mail from DBAC vice-chair Joan Fenton, who owns Quilts Unlimited & J. Fenton Gifts. According to Benford, Fenton said his election was illegal because the bylaws had never been officially approved to allow an election in March, and that she would take over in the interim.

“I said I’d just make this simple and resign,” says Benford. “There’s been a lot of dissent from one or two people. This is a volunteer job. Nobody gets paid.” He adds, “I don’t have energy for this.”

In his resignation letter, Benford listed his accomplishments during the five months he was chair, including DBAC membership being at an all-time high. What he didn’t mention was the parking dispute between CPC owner Mark Brown and the city that has roiled the organization and had it sending conflicting messages to City Council.

Benford came under fire from Fenton and others for an April 17 letter to City Council that said the DBAC would not take sides in the dispute between Brown and the city. It urged a quick resolution and for the city to come up with a long-term plan to deal with parking.

At a May 25 DBAC meeting, Violet Crown Cinema’s Robert Crane called for a petition to City Council that it not sell the Water Street Parking Garage to Brown. Violet Crown, which had hired DBAC member Susan Payne’s public relations firm to represent it, held a June 2 meeting on parking and attendees unanimously agreed that the garage should be a public utility. Days later, council passed a resolution to make an offer to buy Brown’s shares of the garage.

That was followed by a June 23 letter from downtown association board member Mary Beth Schellhammer on DBAC letterhead asking both the city and CPC to knock off the heated rhetoric—the city threatened eminent domain and CPC to close the garage—and come to a quick resolution.

Fenton contends that Benford went to the city and said the DBAC was in favor of it selling its shares of the garage to Brown. She also accused him of not being transparent, and of stalling a DBAC vote on a resolution to keep the garage a public utility.

“From my perspective, [Benford] has done so much damage to the organization and now he’s continuing to damage it,” says Fenton.

“He has a large group of people beholden to Mark Brown,” she says. “There’s a perception CPC is running DBAC.”

Certainly the two organizations have always been intertwined, with downtown booster Stroh holding leadership positions in both. CPC has provided office space and support to DBAC, says Benford, and CPC employee Sarah Mallan is DBAC’s secretary and treasurer.

“DBAC records are kept at the parking garage,” says Fenton. “I think that’s a conflict.”

Brown says that two people out of 17 on the DBAC board work for him. “Didn’t the DBAC encourage the city to fight me and not settle with me?” he asks.

Fenton also questions board members who don’t own businesses downtown, such as Benford, who used to own the restaurant Siips on the mall, and Amy Wicks-Horn, who joined DBAC when she was director of the Virginia Discovery Museum.

Benford says he offered to resign when he sold the restaurant. “Everyone, including Joan, asked me to stay on,” he says.

And Fenton questions the link between Wicks-Horn, who currently works for the Piedmont Family YMCA, which received funding for the new Y from the Jessup family, a member of which also sold Brown his shares in the Water Street Garage Condominium Association.

“I categorically deny that,” says Wicks-Horn. She says she’s not representing the Y with her DBAC membership, and she volunteers because of her passion to support downtown.

“DBAC is a strong partner with CPC and it’s also a strong partner with the city,” she says, and both entities are concerned about the issue of parking downtown. “That doesn’t mean we’re in the city’s pocket and it doesn’t mean we’re in CPC’s pocket.”

Spring Street owner Cynthia Schroeder sees the need for a new business group, an idea she’s had plans for since 2012. “I’m starting a new, honest, open organization to increase business on the Downtown Mall,” she says. “It’s fresh, it’s going to be very active.”

Schroeder doesn’t believe Benford should be chair of DBAC. “It’s unraveling,” she says. “I’m going to put my energy into my effort,” which she says she’d like to have in place by January.

After submitting a resignation not only as chair, but as a member of the DBAC executive committee, board and association itself, Benford reconsidered August 10. “I have received numerous requests to rescind my resignation letter,” he says, and he will remain on a member of the DBAC and its board of directors.

The legality of Benford’s chairmanship was raised at a bylaws committee meeting August 5, says Fenton. Some have questioned whether her interpretation of the bylaws, which the board had talked about updating but she believes never did, is correct.

“I can’t swear to one or the other,” she says. “But if he resigned, it doesn’t matter. He’s got copies of the bylaws, and he could have said, ‘I think you’re reading this wrong.’”

Fenton says she’s been asked to hold an emergency meeting, but with a regular DBAC meeting scheduled for August 17 and the annual meeting in September, she wants the entire membership to vote on who leads the group. “We can start with a clean slate,” she says.

Resignation letter (1)

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DBAC urges city and parking center to knock off bully tactics

Former mayor Dave Norris urges the city to stop kicking the can forward and resolve the Water Street Parking Garage morass once and for all. Staff photo

The Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville sent a letter to city councilors and Charlottesville Parking Center owner Mark Brown today requesting the city and the CPC “reach a quick agreement on the parking stalemate” over the Water Street Garage and withdraw “extreme threats” such as eminent domain and closing the garage.

Mary Beth Schellhammer wrote on behalf of the DBAC board of directors to ask the city and Brown to consider the “significant impact the lack of resolution is having on the image of downtown Charlottesville.”

An impasse over parking rates at the garage, jointly owned by the city and Brown, has escalated to lawsuits, with the city saying last week it had begun the condemnation process on the garage for eminent domain, while Brown filed to have an emergency receivership appointed to run the garage.

“I think this is a very welcome development,” says Dave Norris, CPC general manager and a former mayor of Charlottesville. “Anytime government threatens eminent domain, it really is pushing a nuclear button.”

Two weeks ago, members of the DBAC were circulating petitions urging the city not to sell its shares in the garage at the same time the parking center said it was on the verge of a settlement with the city. At the June 6 City Council meeting, councilors passed a surprise resolution to buy Brown’s shares of the garage.

“The consistent theme is DBAC communicating they want to see this matter resolved,” says Norris. “They want to be able to preserve affordable parking downtown. That’s their bottom line.”

Norris says he thinks some DBAC members were uncomfortable with the city’s threat to use eminent domain against fellow business owners. “If you read between the lines, they’re saying don’t use eminent domain in our name,” he says.

“The letter is not going back on anything we’ve said,” says Schellhammer. “Time is critical. We’re stressing to the city and Mark Brown not to let this drag on.” If a receiver is appointed to manage the garage, “this could go on for three, four, five years,” she says.

As for eminent domain, she says she doesn’t know that’s needed and there’s room for everyone downtown. “I believe Mark Brown deserves to own a business and be profitable. The city deserves to be able to provide affordable parking.”

The escalating dispute, she says, “is a bully fight.”

The Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce also wants the city and CPC to negotiate a settlement. “Eminent domain is a hammer that isn’t necessary,” says its president, Timothy Hulbert.

Read the DBAC letter to Mark Brown and city councilors

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Surprise resolution: City makes move to buy Water Street Garage

The city didn’t tell Mark Brown it was passing a resolution to buy him out of the Water Street Garage. Staff photo

City Council unanimously passed a resolution June 6 authorizing City Manager Maurice Jones to make an offer to buy the parking spaces owned by Charlottesville Parking Center in the Water Street Garage. Both the city and CPC owner Mark Brown have said they are in talks to resolve issues that led to the entities suing each other, but Brown says he was unaware of the plan offered up Monday night.

Just when things seemed to be quietening down in the ongoing battle between the city and Brown over the fate of the Water Street Garage, downtown business owners, not reassured by the two sides promising to play nice and work things out, met June 2 for an “open and impartial discussion” that ended with the 60 or so attendees endorsing a petition brought by Violet Crown and its PR firm that opposes privatization of the garage.

The city’s handling of downtown parking also was roundly condemned.

“We have a parking problem,” said downtown property owner Aaron Laufer—several times. He also wondered whether eminent domain for the Water Street Garage was an option.

The latest consternation started a week earlier at a Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville meeting when Violet Crown’s Robert Crane, aided by Payne Ross’ Susan Payne, proposed a petition to the city that it not sell its share of the complicatedly owned Water Street Garage.

“We would not have come into this community without affordable parking,” said Violet Crown owner Bill Banowsky at the June 2 meeting. The theater had an agreement with the Charlottesville Parking Center to pay 35 cents an hour for validated parking, the same rate that Regal Cinema had. Brown bought CPC for $13.8 million in 2014, and the parking rate doubled, said Banowsky. The city agreed to subsidize 20 cents an hour, but that agreement only goes through the end of the year, he said.

“CPC has gone on record saying they want to drive up rates to what the market will bear,” said Banowsky.

IX complex owner Ludwig Kuttner was even blunter: “We have a maniac who decides to blackmail us. He plays crazy, we play crazy.”

ludwigKuttner
Play crazy in dealing with Mark Brown, advises Ix owner Ludwig Kuttner. Staff photo

While Kuttner said building a garage at IX was an option, he also suggested the group find properties suitable for parking. “I know 20 spots we could use that are not used now,” he said.

Brown claims the city is forcing him to keep Water Street Garage rates below market rate and below what the city charges at the Market Street Garage. He filed suit against the city in March, and the city countersued in April, alleging it didn’t get right of first refusal on parking spaces Wells Fargo sold to CPC.

Brown was not at the June 2 meeting, nor was anyone from CPC. Before the meeting, brand new general manager and former mayor Dave Norris pooh-poohed the notion that Brown would jack up rates. “That doesn’t make business sense,” he says, especially when Brown’s share of parking downtown is 19 percent.

Norris pointed out that Violet Crown has a monopoly downtown and it didn’t jack up its rates, nor did Brown with Main Street Arena or Yellow Cab, companies he owns. “He’s a business guy,” says Norris.

Jones sent a letter on behalf of the city to DBAC president George Benford to reassure those at the meeting that work was going to address long-term parking needs. “It is important to emphasize that despite increased recent attention, we do not have a parking crisis in downtown,” said the letter.

Tin Whistle owner Jacie Dunkle wasn’t buying it. “For Maurice to send that, that’s bull,” she said. “Quite frankly, I don’t trust the City Council to make a wise choice,” she said, mentioning the recent increase in the meals tax despite restaurant owners’ objections. “They already know we don’t want meters,” a plan recommended by a city study and by Brown.

City councilors Bob Fenwick and Wes Bellamy were at the meeting. “These things are being discussed in executive session,” said Fenwick.

Councilors pay close attention to e-mails from constituents, said Bellamy, and the voices he’s hearing on the issue are fragmented. “Unity is what’s going to move things through,” he said.

“If another 1,000 spaces were parachuted downtown, I don’t care if Mark Brown owns Water Street,” said Laufer, who added that Brown is a friend. He urged the city to buy out Brown.

The city had multiple opportunities to buy the garage before Brown did, says Norris, and he questions whether it will be able to afford millions to upgrade the garage when it cut $50,000 for the municipal band from the budget. “There are 300 empty spaces on the third floor with a 200-plus person waiting list,” he says. “How does that make sense?”

Charlottesville is facing parking issues on multiple fronts. Albemarle is looking at whether to remove its general district court from Court Square because of parking. New businesses need parking, as do employees and the Landmark Hotel.

“My concern with the petition in general is it’s going to prolong and maintain the litigiousness going on now,” says Norris. “We have an opportunity to resolve it. Let’s resolve the long-term issues with parking.” That was before the City Council resolution. Norris was unavailable at press time, and Brown declined to comment on the city’s latest plan.